Archive for March, 2011
10 inventions your great-grandmother wished she had
Saturday, March 19th, 2011
One of the first vacuum cleaners
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
I have a job. A great job. One I could choose myself. My great-grandmother also had a job. A tough one and not one she could choose herself. She was a housewife, and in the 1800s being a housewife was a tough, full-time job. If you had the money you would hire a maid to do the dirty work for you. If not, you had to do it yourself. I am a housewife too: 1 hour a day. In that time, I cook a meal for my family on my efficient gas stove, using the stock in my fridge, my freezer and the tins of food in my garage. While dinner is cooking, I pop some washing in the washing machine or dryer, vacuum clean the carpet or clear out the dishwasher. And while I’m doing so, my thoughts wander of to my great-grandmother and how she would have marveled at my easy housekeeping. In honour to her and all the great-grandmothers in the world, here’s a list of the 10 inventions they would have loved to have. The 10 inventions that has made it possible for our generation to seek a life beyond housekeeping if we want to!
Gas/electric stove
Imagine cooking on a coal stove or range. First you need to feed it with coal which you have to go get from the coal cellar. Then, you have to light a fire that burns just so that it gets hot enough to cook on without consuming the coal too fast. Regulating the heat was a heavy task involving lifting heavy iron rings from the range or letting them down. Pots and pans would get stained with a black patina, and coal particles would land everywhere in the kitchen making a thorough weekly cleaning session no luxury at all. Just compare that to gas or electric cooking: just turn on the stove, it heats up immediately, you can regulate the heat just by turning a button, no patina on your pots and pans and no coal particles flying around. So clean and easy!
Washing machine
Washing would take three days: one to soak, one to wash and one to dry and iron. The washing alone took a whole day. It started by getting buckets of hot water at the water shop, carrying them home to fill the washing tub and boil it further on the range. After the cooking, some rinsing, then bleach for the whites. Rinsing again, and yet again. Finally, wringing it all out (by hand in the worst case). Imagine how she would have been thrilled by a machine that would do all that automatically at the push of a button!
Dryer
Holland is perhaps one of the countries with the fewest days in a year suitable for hanging out the washing. It’s often too damp, too rainy or too cold. So great-grandma probably spent a lot of time cramming lots of damp washing on a couple of drying lines in the attic or above the stove. She would have loved the drying machine.
Running hot and cold water
No more pumping up the water and heating it on the stove or buying it a the water store. Just open the the faucet and get instant hot water to clean your house with, wash your hair, bathe the kids…
Electric iron
Ever tried to iron with a coal iron? It’s heavy, clumsy and a real art to get the wrinkles out without burning the tissue or staining it with coal!
Fridge and freezer
Have you ever thought about how much time your great-grandma would have spent preserving food? Hours of making jam and chutney, salting and drying fish and flesh, keeping the dispense dry and keeping out the bugs from flour and the like.
Vacuum cleaner
In a coal-heated house dust was everywhere. Not only did your great-grandmother have to clean the floor more often, it was more tedious to do it also. If somebody would tell her that in a hundred years time women would clean the floor of an entire house in just half an hour she would have never believed you.
Central heating
Only the rich would have spent the time, effort and money to light a fire in every room. It was more common to only have a warm kitchen (where the range gave heat already). The rest of the rooms would have been bitterly cold in winter. Think of the luxury we have. We simply heat up all rooms by turning a button.
Canned food and supermarkets
If you cannot preserve your food that long, you need to go shopping every day to get fresh bread, veggies and meat. It must have been a great way to meets friends and gossip, but it was time consuming as well. Getting bread, vegetables and meat alone already required a trip to three different shops. Self-service was unheard of, so every visit to a shop involved standing in line and waiting for the shop assistant to complete your order. Doing all the shopping for a whole week (or two) in just one hour, and keeping it fresh was something of a dream. Canned food and supermarkets made it possible though.
Dishwasher
Washing dishes was a heavy job. With families often consisting of about ten family members, and with heavy pots and pans and no running hot water, it definitely wasn’t your great-grandmother’s favorite job. I’m certain she would have loved that dishwasher!
So next time you use your washing machine, vacuum cleaner, open a can for dinner or stock up on food in the supermarket and think you are doing a tedious job, think of your great-grandma and how she would have loved to trade places with you!
Witte Wieven: Ghostly Ladies Of The Marshes
Friday, March 4th, 2011
White ladies living on barrows by Gerrit van Goedesbergh 1660.
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
Probably as long as people have roamed the earth and have been able to tell stories, they have enjoyed scaring each other with spooky stories about the creatures of the night. In the area where I live –Twente, in the eastern part of the Netherlands near the German border– one of the favorite spooky creatures is the “Witte Wief” which literally translates as “White Lady”. Some, however, argue that the word “wit” is derived from the old word “wid” which means “wise” and therefore “Witte Wieven” are not white ladies but wise ladies.
According to local folklore, these white ladies roam the marshes at night and lure people into the swamps to drown them there. They are also regarded as omens of death. On the other hand, there are sagas in which they appear as wise women that help and cure. Whether evil or good, they are always described as long-haired women with long white gowns. I once hiked in the moors here at dusk on a cold, misty autumn afternoon and I can assure you that it was very easy to mistake the wisps of fog for ghostly creatures in long white dresses. They are misleading also, making the trail hard to see. Ending up in the swamp was a real danger. A spooky experience indeed. However, scholars believe there is more to the story than creepy surroundings and a vivid imagination.
White ladies are not a specifically Dutch invention. They are part of a very old, pre-Christian, northern European tradition. France has Dame Blanche, the Irish have Sídhe and the Scandinavian countries have álfar (elves). They all are white, shiny creatures associated with death and wisdom. Scholars believe they all go back to the Völva, the high priestesses of the pre-Christian Nordic cultures. The Völva were wise women, usually from the highest classes that were highly respected because of their wisdom and power. They were well trained in the secrets of their religion. If you needed advice, even if you were a king, you would call upon a Völva to assist you with her wisdom. She usually did not live in a village but traveled on her own (sometimes accompanied by a group of young students) from place to place. These were the women that had knowledge about natural medicine, political strategies, meteorology and the like. Knowledge not shared by the common people. Knowledge that gave them immense power because it was intimidating. Power for which they were admired and feared at the same time. You did not want to make a Völva your enemy, for she could easily send death upon you.
The Völva are no mythological creatures. They are historic figures that for example the Romans commented upon in their travel logs, and they remained imported figures in daily life until the early Middle Ages. By then, Christianity had firmly settled in Northern Europe and the once so powerful Völva slowly disappeared. Her spirit survived, however, in the figure of the white lady.
I wonder, if some of this tradition of a strong female, a wise female, has also survived in Dutch and other Nordic cultures where women tended to be more independent and not subordinated to men in respect to their southern European sisters. For centuries travelers form the South have marveled at those big, blond, bossy Dutch women who legally had little rights (just as all European women had), but in practice just did whatever they wanted (which most other European women would never dare), and were still respected for it by their men (a nightmarish idea for most European men at the time).
